Mobile businesses are up against unique challenges. From field sales to delivery, omnipresence is the key. But, in reality, things can be difficult. It calls for significant spending on time and resources to track things. Thus, it leaves you with little room to plan future strategies. With geofencing, you have a solution.
Honestly, geofencing is a small change, but it makes a huge difference. First, you must answer the question: What is geofencing used for in your line of business? Once you do, you can focus on the implementation. Here’s how implementing geofencing solves unique problems for mobile businesses.
The Problem: The absence of an effective and reliable time-tracking system.
Are you one of those businesses that tracks time on paper? Need help matching accuracy? It’s about time you level up. Manual time tracking is based on honor systems, which means zero real-time insights. Are you even working if you don’t know how your organization spends its working hours?
The Solution: GPS-led automatic time tracking.
Geofencing allows mobile businesses to gain leverage with an automatic time-tracking system. It takes a simple app to make things work. With GPS powering things, the advantages are plenty.
- You get a detailed timesheet for hours spent by every employee.
- Team members can check each other’s real-time location via live maps.
- Field employees have a pre-set route and location data to refer to.
- Accountants can download employee timesheets to initiate remuneration. Usually, the app will have the final figures ready. Thus, it saves you time spent on calculation.
- Depending on the business structure, admins and managers can set up job sites effortlessly. You can also have rules for the timer to start when people enter and go off when they leave a job site.
The Problem: Inaccurate and Untimely Invoices
Field teams for mobile businesses have a lot to focus on. As one can imagine, designing trackable invoices isn’t exactly on their list. However, without a smart invoicing system, things ought to get slow. There have been several instances where handwritten invoices from mobile team members were difficult to read, let alone track. Besides, hiring an admin to gather invoices, decipher them, and put them into books is impractical. Not to push trust issues here, but without real-time tracking, you will never know if the employee was present on the job site on a certain date and time.
The Solution: Data-driven digital invoicing for various job roles
Investing in geofencing software allows you to create unique invoices based on vital datasets. Some of the notable features include:
- Pay rate – Knowing who needs to be paid at what rate makes sense. With live tracking of working hours, the software can automatically create a detailed invoice in seconds.
- Proof of work – A geofenced job site is a foolproof way to check on your team members and subcontractors. The hours are automatically clocked in when they enter and clocked out when they stop working. If they pause, they can be sent reminders to restart time tracking.
- Leave A Note – This feature helps employees inform clients about important issues necessary to consider during invoicing.
The digital invoices you generate are downloadable. So you can easily attach and share them whenever you like. The invoices permanently stay in the system for easy reference later. In short, everything is archived, and there’s zero data loss.
The Problem: Tracking Time (Billable vs. Non-billable)
Mobile workforce customers often have to pay team members for work they won’t bill clients for. Some common examples include attending meetings and calls or preparing briefs and presentations.
The Solution: Implementing geofencing to assign a billable status for specific projects.
Using geofencing software lets you easily classify projects as billable or non-billable. When your team starts tracking time, the software automatically segregates billable and non-billable hours.
For a business, this is helpful as it allows easy profitability tracking. Using geofencing software also adds to your credibility. As billable and non-billable hours get tracked separately, you won’t have to reassure clients of transparent invoicing.
Closing Thoughts
Mobile businesses can’t afford to lose track of things at work. With geofencing at the center, organizations spend both time and money. It also helps accelerate deliveries and achieve accuracy across projects. In turn, it adds to the goodwill and attracts more prospects.